Justin Fox, who has recently taken the helm at Harvard Business Review, makes the important point that the chief executives of major financial institutions took enormous risks because shareholders wanted them to take enormous risks.

Given the systemic importance of financial institutions, which causes central banks and governments to bail them out when things go wrong, this is a serious problem — and its one not envisioned in the usual analyses of what’s wrong with executive pay. “Aligning manager interest with shareholder interest does not necessarily mean a sound or socially responsible policy,” Columbia Law Professor John Coffee said at the conference. And yet, as Coffee pointed out, a major plank of the financial reform package now being worked out by House and Senate negotiators is a series of reforms intended to give shareholders more say in how corporate managers are rewarded. Hmmmm.

Those who are expecting much from the latest round of financial reform will be disappointed — that much we can guarantee.